damned_institute | Day 46: Sun Room

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Day 46: Sun Room

Peter woke up suddenly, his body twisting in the bed and then forcing him to catch his breath in pain. Pain, which was coming from his middle because of the thing that had scratched him last night, and after that...

After that, Zach had jumped in front of him like some kind of martyr, like the exact opposite of everything Sylar stood for, to take the next hit for him. It got pretty fuzzy after that, so night must have ended right around then.

The man let out a pained grunt as he straightened himself up in bed. For some reason, he got the feeling that he'd slept in. There was no way for him to really tell without a window in the room, but he just knew. The fact that Sam's bed looked long since vacated was another clue.

Sam, but was he Sam again? Had the brainwashing worn off, as he and Roland had hoped, or was he going to have to go through this nightmare for even longer? He didn't know how long he could handle "Zach" and "Harrison" before he started going batty himself.

Pulling himself out of bed, Peter lifted his shirt and saw that he was tightly bandaged. The scratch most likely wasn't nearly as bad as the bite that "Zach" had received, but it still smarted. He let his shirt fall and then had to deal with a nurse chiding him for sleeping through the morning announcements. Not that Peter really cared at the moment. He was too busy thinking about last night and the fact that in a way, he now owed something to Sylar. Except it hadn't been Sylar. That was something he was sure of now.

Lost in his thoughts, Peter reached the Sun Room right as the rest of the patient populace was trickling in from breakfast. Sighing to himself, he headed over to the bulletin board and then saw a note written in familiar yet unpleasant handwriting. Holding his pen in a vice grip, Peter scribbled out a reply and then stalked over to an armchair and fell into it with a huff.

While Sylar was maddeningly frustrating, there was one good thing about the fact that he was himself again. It meant that Nathan was too.

[For Spock!]

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Medic tents? That sounded something like it, Naminé supposed, but the concept of that was above her as well. She frowned when Alita asked her if they "did" anything to her. That was the problem, actually. Because, if they did...

"I don't remember. The whole time, I was asleep. I'm not sure if they did anything other than tend to my wounds." It was a disturbing thing to consider, but she had to visit that possibility. It was possible that her memory of her stay was tampered with. Imagine, the Memory Witch having her own memories altered.

Schuldig had the red hair, but his other distinguishing characteristic was sorely missing. For the first time in years - and to a far greater degree since he'd first arrived at the institute - he didn't feel cocky at all.

He'd woken up to his telepathy feeling strangely...deadened, as though all the thoughts he could normally hear were muffled; it was a strange sensation, as though he were trying to hear with his ears packed with cotton, except that the cotton was inside his head. There were a few burns from the electricity he'd been hit with, as well as some lingering numbness, but such considerations were almost completely ignored in the face of this far more unnerving development, of being struck mostly deaf.

He could hardly hear any outside thoughts at all anymore, and those he could he had to actually make an effort to grasp. It bordered on having privacy - something he'd wanted for a large part of his life but genuinely didn't know what to do with now that it was thrust upon him. He had any number of thoughts of his own that he could hardly bear to be alone with, that he'd been quite happy to let others drown out. And he was vulnerable, in ways he'd never truly been before and certainly couldn't afford to be now; he had too many enemies to not know what they were thinking.

And the words brain damage...they'd been haunting him ever since he'd seen them so helpfully written out in Artemis' hand. He wondered if Artemis truly understood the implications of his telepathy malfunctioning, of his possibly being irreparably damaged; Schwarz didn't have room for charity cases. That he was all of Schwarz there was at the moment was hardly comforting.

Upon spotting Yohji, he walked over to sit beside him more out of instinct than anything else. For once, he didn't have anything much to say.

Yuffie took a deep breath as she sat up, almost like she thought she could shoo out all the frustration and bitterness of the past few days just by sighing loudly enough. Which she tried, promptly, to little effect.

"Take a seat," she patted the couch-space next to her, staring out across the Sun Room. There was Cloud, all wrapped up around — Aerith?! A-Aerith. Yuffie gawked, scrubbed her eyes once and shook her head, and still she saw the Flower Girl. The board… So, it hadn't been a lie. Somehow. But she'd have to make sure, later, because That Night was still fresh in her mind. The ghost and the whispers, and then the blood and the Masamune and—

She snapped back to herself. "Urk… It's, um." Okay, this spacing out thing? Had to stop. She resumed searching, eyes flashing dangerously when she picked him out (wasn't difficult; the guy stuck out like a Razor Weed in a field of daisies). Psychoroth, the Silver General. "That's the guy," she said. "Behold the Hero of Wutai."

Lelouch gave a short nod. "The institute does not appear to discriminate between the living and the dead. In some cases, however, it may simply be that the person in question was stolen away from their home dimension at a point in time before they experienced their death. Others have simply been revived through some means known only to the institute staff. Euphemia falls into the latter category, I believe."

Something else about Rolo's question nagged at him, but as he couldn't quite figure out what and he needed to continue his explanation, he soon dismissed it in favor of expanding further. "At any rate, don't be surprised if your memories don't align with others from our world. Suzaku and I were taken from different points in time, for instance, but luckily the disparity seems to have worked out in our favor. He and I have been working together here."

He paused again, examining Rolo closely to see his reaction. He wasn't entirely sure what sort of relationship his fake brother had had with the illustrious Knight of Seven outside of what he'd observed at school, but he couldn't see it being a very harmonious one. The prospect of Lelouch and Suzaku working together therefore couldn't be a very appealing one to him, but Rolo would just have to find some way to deal with it. And if he did anything to Suzaku...

Rolo's reaction was one of shock, but not because of what Lelouch said about him and Suzaku working together. It was because of what he said earlier, about their memories not syncing. People coming from different times. And, the dead coming back to life... Rolo just stared at his hands as it finally sunk in. He had suspected it when he first came here, but it was difficult to believe when he was able to walk and talk and do everything other living people could do. But now the truth was undeniable: He was dead.

Not only dead, but... This next question was one that Rolo was almost afraid to ask, but he had to, or else it was going to nag at him forever and distract him from more important tasks, like helping his brother. Not to mention, it was one that only Lelouch could answer. Rolo knew his brother was busy, so he had to do what he could not to waste his brother's time from his tasks.

"And... where... when did you come from? What do you last remember?" Rolo wasn't sure if he wanted to know; no matter what time Lelouch answered, it didn't seem like it would end well for him. But it would tell him about the nature of Lelouch's odd behavior towards him, why he seemingly dropped all pretense of caring about him.

Yukari giggled at the flustered robot; oh, this was just too precious. Form affected function, so perhaps his new human body was playing funny with that robot mind of his? He was like a little kid.

"Complicated, is it? In what way?" she chuckled. She could claim that making him say these things aloud would help him sort out his feelings, but in truth she just wanted to see him squirm.

The hunter frowned. If someone had messed with her best friend, she was going to make them beg for death and then teach them true fear.

"Does... everything feel normal?" Falis tapped Namine's temple to emphasize what she meant.

Ritsu offered a strong nod of agreement to Hanatarou's description of the place, oblivious to any confusion his strange mannerisms were causing. He wasn't exactly adept at reading reactions - part of the reason he seemed to think anything short of a sneeze was an expression of displeasure at something he had said, or done.

"Ah, yes. My cousin, Kagura-san...I found her this morning, and she...told me. Some...some things." He glanced back and forth nervously, the action far less subtle than he had meant it to be, as most of his actions were once he became relatively distressed. He was still worried that he had managed to offend Yamada-san, though he couldn't for the life of him figure out how. Most of the time, he wasn't sure what he had done, and just tended to apologize for everything he could think of.

His curiosity towards the strange place he was in just barely managed to trump the need to beg for forgiveness that was rising within him. Just barely.

"She told me some...some strange things. Not that I don't believe her, I do, this humble Ritsu would never dream of suggesting that Kagura-san would lie, I...its just--" he paused, his breath coming quickly as he leaned in and spoke more quietly. "...is everyone quite sure this isn't a...a bad dream?"

Feel normal... Naminé honestly didn't know. It was not normal for her to "forget" like that, but she didn't know if she couldn't remember, or if she had nothing to remember. One was impossible, the other implausible.

"I... I think so. I can remember everything before then, and everything after that. It's just my time at this hospital that I can't remember," She reported, wondering if Alita could make any sense of it. Doubtful, but Naminé held Alita's opinion on anything in very high regard; her friend had much, much more worldly experience than her.

"Hmm."

Falis decided to plop down on the floor (her toe was still bothering her as it was) and propped her chin up on her hand. It was odd that despite being seated on the floor, the pose mimicked the way she typically was when on the throne in deep thought. Perhaps the princess had become far more a part of her than she ever wanted to admit.

"Sometimes after a bad injury, people go into a deep, healing, sleep for a long time. It's got some fancy fucking name, but I never bothered to remember it. Usually it's something that happens when a person falls off their horse, takes a blow to the head, get some nasty poison or something like that," Falis explained. "Sometimes they wake up. Sometimes they die. The ones that do wake up, almost never remember anything from when they were in the healing sleep."

She looked up at Namine. "Maybe that's what happened to you."

He spotted Haseo coming towards him long before he actually reached him and that was actually a relief. Sora had always snuck up on people, come up behind them, caught them by surprise and sad as it was, Tsukasa didn't think that he could take that right now. Ah, this was so screwed up. Utterly ludicrous, everything that was going on was. He couldn't believe that he was actually longing for school and exams but he was. It made more sense and in a way, it was everything that he'd been wanting for a long time. A normal life. And now this happened. He wished that Bear was there to speak to. He always knew what to say.

He gave Haseo a slightly lopsided smile and nodded. "Mmm, just tired. Thinking about stuff. Trying not to think about stuff." He'd figure it out eventually, he just had to do it while making sure it didn't get him down. He knew that he didn't deal well with depression. "How are you doing?"

"Bewitchment? It was reprogramming, is what it was, and I'll claw my own brain out through my ears if they try to do it to me again."

Scourge's brush wavered slightly staining those curious bits of flesh around the edges of his nails. He didn't glare at the Scarecrow for the comment, but he did give his nails a hard look for daring to have considered conformity with the natives.

... Curious. Why would Rolo have such a strong reaction to the news? Had something happened before his arrival here that Lelouch wasn't aware of? The only things he knew of that might apply had to do with the meeting at the shrine, the second battle of Tokyo, his betrayal at the hands of the Black Knights-- there were too many options. It might even have had something to do with Ragnarok, but... or was Rolo from some point earlier? Some point where hearing of an alliance with Suzaku would strike him almost dumb... or was it something else Lelouch had said?

"I had been preparing to meet with Suzaku at the Kururugi Shrine. We had already finalized the formation of the U.F.N. and were to attack the Tokyo settlement later that day." He gave Rolo another long look, frowning to himself now. "Suzaku has already informed me of certain events following that, but naturally, his perspective on things is drastically different from what I would have experienced.

"You should also be aware that our abilities are weaker here," he continued, deciding to ignore Rolo's mood for now. It wasn't like he cared. "I've no doubt that you're already aware of this, but it bears repeating. The institute does return patient abilities to their full strength occasionally, but in those situations, patients are under the institute's complete control. You can usually distinguish those patients from the others by the fact that they have their usual clothing on rather than a patient uniform and they have possession of their usual weapons, but as some patients inexplicably have their own clothing with them regardless, it's best not to judge on that alone."

"Yes," Keman sighed, "I suppose it does. I'm sorry." It was hard to be optimistic around Ryuuzaki, he decided. The man kind of sucked the joy out of a room.

The dragon smiled down at the cat. "I had a lot of pets when I was younger. Some followed me home, some just...turned up. Animals are smart, you know. She may just like your smell and how warm you are, of course, but I think she actually does like you." He missed his pets. He really did.

"I felt...good. I guess. I felt like I was 'better' and that it was just a matter of time until I got out of here and back to my family. I thought that being 'Keman' was embarrassing. I thought that...Sunday night and every night, for that matter, was just a bad dream."

Following Alita's lead, Naminé also sat down on the floor, tucking her legs under her as she listened intently to Alita. And as always, her friend had an explanation for everything. She described it a deep healing sleep... The witch nodded. In a way, she did this to Sora. Of course, it was because she was restoring his memories, but...

"That makes sense. I did feel like I was waking from a very deep sleep." She smiled, her uneasiness fading away quickly. Alita had that effect on her.

"You know so much, Alita. I'm really grateful," She bowed her head slightly, thanking her friend for her input and ... also, perhaps another apology for disappearing. If only she hadn't been so weak...

"Yeah," Touya said, not sounding at all pleased by this. "I figured."

That was something he was saving for another time: Yue's sudden decision to leave him and Sakura behind and face whatever perils lay beyond that (then) mysterious door alone. Touya got that Yue was trying to protect him and Sakura, but what if they had vanished and something had happened to the ones left behind? If there was one thing soccer had taught Touya, it was that leaving half of your team behind wasn't the way to win. It was a great way to have the other team spearhead your defense, though.

"But it was a really dumb move," he said, trying not to sound angry with Yuki. He was however, annoyed by Yue's decision. "I know he wants to make sure nothing happens to me and Sakura, but he can't just leave us behind like that. I mean, not only are we totally vulnerable then, but we have to deal with the fact that if something happens to you and him? We can't help. We don't even know if something's gone wrong."

He let out a breath. "I'm not blaming you. But I don't think he can see past keeping us completely out of harm's way."

Kenren smirked at the guy's rather grumpy response. Well, this could be interesting couldn't it? He stretched out comfortably on the couch, taking a long look around the room before turning his attention back to the blond guy. "Well, I always try to be polite. Some of the time anyway. At least half of the time and..." His gaze was caught by something across the room. Was that... He started to snicker softly. Homura covered in glitter. Now that was a sight worth seeing and he committed it to memory. "I'm called Kenren by the way. Are you new here?"

Falis reached out and messed up Namine's hair. "You know, I really missed you. A lot of shit has happened."

She then grinned. "I like having part of my pack back, so we're gonna celebrate tonight. Party in my room. You remember where it is?"

It was about that point that Hanatarou suddenly realized why the name "Sohma" had seemed vaguely familiar. "Your cousin?" he blurted out, with a startled blink. "I, I m-mean, um." Kagura? The same Kagura that he'd met, Bridget's friend? She was Ritsu's cousin?

"Ah. S-sorry, I...I know a, um, Sohma Kagura and. I wasn't expecting. Er." The shinigami ducked his head, rubbing at the back of his neck uncomfortably. This was probably going to make things worse, wasn't it. He was sure it was. Why couldn't he just keep his mouth shut?

"No sir, he is a Romulan," Chekov corrected, wondering vaguely if McCoy had just... forgotten. He did look older, and if serving under Captain Kirk for the next fifteen years was anything like serving under him for those few hours, he didn't blame Doctor McCoy in the slightest. Although, Chekov personally didn't think he'd ever be able to forget Nero--seeing as he wiped out most of the Starfleet cadets in that fatal 'rescue mission', as well as an entire planet.

"He attecked Wulcan, remember? It was ze mission wiz three Keptains: Keptain Pike, zen Commander Spock beceme ze Keptain, and finally Keptain Kirk, sir," Chekov said, trying to jog Doctor McCoy's memory a little without going into many details. He didn't exactly want to remember how he'd calculated that Vulcan only had minutes before it collapsed into itself, or how he'd failed to save Commander Spock's mother.

"Probably a wise decision," Artemis agreed. He imagined he would have been rather mortified if he'd given away hay of his possessions while he was 'Sean'. Especially his sword or suit or journal.

"The usual fare," he said lightly. "Fielding attempts at psychological torture, fighting to stay alive during the night, learning to eat meat again. Perhaps I should pick up a relaxing hobby. Like bomb construction," he said with a chuckle. "I regret I still haven't investigated the town as you requested me to do--though once I do I will of course report anything that I find suspicious or worthy of note."

"Why would people be after your life?" Kagura asked. If Hime didn't want to answer then Kagura would be fine with that. Every person had their individual circumstances, and Hime might not be ready to share hers. Besides, Hime didn't seem like the sort of person that could be forced to do anything.

When Hime shifted the conversation, Kagura had to admit she was relieved. Talking about monsters was somehow easier than talking about the ugliness of the human heart.

"Let's see. As an exorcist, my job was to deal with evil spirits that posed a threat to the living. Even though many spirits couldn't be perceived by people without spiritual sense, they were still able to cause disasters in the natural world. There were even some spirits that were powerful enough to manifest themselves in front of normal people."

But Kagura's life as an exorcist was behind her. She couldn't go back to the Agency; not after what she'd done, and she couldn't let them have Yomi either.

Momo failed to see how bomb construction was relaxing, so she assumed Artemis meant it as a joke. "You could always try your hand at napkin art," she said with a small grin.

It was a little disappointed to hear that Artemis hadn't had a chance to look at the town, but all in due time. She had shifted her own goals as it was. "Now, keep this to yourself, please. I am currently looking into the basement and working with a new group. I hope I am doing the right thing by keeping certain people out of the loop."

She did like talking didn't she? He wondered if he was scaring her. He wasn't trying to be scary, not much anyway. "You wouldn't have liked it if I'd decided to bust right through," Allelujah replied with a shrug. "Threats are much better and don't lead to other people bleeding." He smiled slightly. "I never claimed to be normal either." He wasn't normal by any stretch of the imagination.

His smile faded with her next comment and he scowled slightly. "I didn't do anything to piss her off. I was just crossing the courtyard on my own, was polite to her, and she started torturing me," he replied flatly, shrugging one shoulder. So he'd beaten her up and pushed her into the freezing lake. That had been somewhat satisfying. "And I don't have any ill intentions towards Badou. Why, are you concerned for him?"

Little Angelo in kitty heaven. If only she had a camera; someone should really be getting video of this and playing it on a loop at mealtimes to boost morale.

"It's nice to meet you too. Any friend of the cats is definitely a friend of mine," she replied with a smile. And since she'd just figured out how long she'd been here last shift, Meche was quick with her answer to that too: "Two weeks tomorrow." She made a face. "Wow, hard to believe it's already been that long. I was really hoping we'd be out of here by now." But that was the way these things worked, she knew from experience--you started out hopeful, thinking there must be some easy way out of where you were, and day by day that hope soured into bitterness.

Even with the kitten there, she was so distracted today. Meche shrugged those thoughts off as best she could and got up from the floor, moving over to the sofa to sit next to Euphemia. "What about you?" she asked. "Have you been here long?"

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Day 46: Sun Room

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